


That Capitol Boy

by asianellenpage



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Gen, Hunger Games AU, M/M, Multi, Other, the hunger games - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-11
Updated: 2013-12-11
Packaged: 2018-01-04 07:52:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1078436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asianellenpage/pseuds/asianellenpage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In an alternate timeline where the Project Mockingjay fails, the Hunger Games go on as planned every year, but this time, it’s even more gory and bloodthirsty, the Careers almost always the ones winning ever since the seventy-sixth.</p>
<p>This is a story of a tribute from District Nine, but it’s a little different. It’s a story of a tribute from District Nine from the eyes of a Capitol citizen — and not just any Capitol citizen, the son of the Head Gamemaker. A late submission to Chulu Week 2013 Day 2, in which the prompt was AUs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That Capitol Boy

**Author's Note:**

> This is a very different, challenging writing style. For full effect read this like an impassioned narrator, not as a reader. But if you prefer reading it like a reader let me know, I'll rewrite it if I get more than one "complaint" about it. Other than that, enjoy.

He doesn’t even want to be here, he thinks to himself, as another train slows to a stop, but he has to because his father is the Head Gamemaker and he thought today was bring-your-kids-to-work-day. He looks down onto his thin blue glass-like phone when the door opens and Helga elbows him in the rib to flash at least a small smile at the tributes and the escort before Daddy notices how bored you are.

That’s when he sees him.

He was dragged by the elbow from the train station to the centre by their escort, who his sister identified as Blotch Throlland, guards surrounding him and his female counterpart. Capitol citizens were clamouring towards the train, making almost no way for him and her to walk through. 

They hate the guards, both him and the tribute, and from the facial expression of his pretty blonde counterpart, neither does she. They were beefy, intimidating, and without conversing with them, he can see their rude demeanour.

He isn’t sure whether to like him or not, his face shadowed by a thick moss of hair that always swished about his face every time a Peacekeeper bumps into him unapologetically. His blonde partner shoots him an irritated glance for that, but he only smiles at her, bored, and Pavel thinks he’s hallucinating when the mop of hair is staring to his direction, giving him that smug smirk and turns away, almost making his posh-looking escort trip over her heels.

He doesn’t see him clearly, properly, until days later, when the tributes had to showcase their talents.

They had to be there again, at the centre, to see the tributes showcase their talents. They were in the very back of the viewing room, Helga eating a bowl of salad the way a lady should, and Pavel staring at the stool she was sitting on. It was dark violet and glittery, and frankly more interesting than District Two Tribute One’s talent of breaking up a big clump of rock with just his bare hands. It was interesting, just that he’d seen it somewhere before and it just got rather old.

Everyone was whispering and a door was slammed, everyone typing away, and he zones out through the third district’s set. He decides to eat when his sister purges and goes to the food table again. He checks his glass-like phone again. God help him. The second District Eight tribute leaves.

He is chewing on a leaf of iceberg lettuce, listening to his sister yap on about this other girl in her class who won’t stop talking about her fascination with Project Mockingjay and its effects on the participating districts when hears his father call for the ninth district’s first tribute, and the blonde girl with the annoyed face from yesterday comes through the door with a indifferent stride.

She was given with a long dagger, just one, on a tray cart. She picks it up and examines it, admires it, looking over it from front to back. The dagger glints, and the lights turn off abruptly, and the holographic projections of golden block men begin running around the room, and with graceful movements, almost like dancing, she waves the dagger around, her hair swishing parallel to her dagger, stabbing the holograms, making them collapse.

Stunning, Helga says beside him, but her tone is bored. Pavel tightens his lips into a straight line. The gamemakers grade her as she walks away, and they discuss, and Pavel tunes them out again as Helga offers him a very large marshmallow on a stick dipped in thick chocolate syrup. They chew noisily until the door slams again, and from the darkness, the boy with the hair over his eyes that swishes violently when bumped emerges. Pavel stuffs the rest of the marshmallow into his mouth and drops the stick, and rushes past the gamemakers to get a spot to look at him properly.

He receives a katana from the trolley, the lights turn off abruptly and again the holograms appear. He flips his hair up and begins to fight. Pavel’s breath hitches.

A side flip. A hit. A stab. Run. A stab from the back. Cut his neck off. Another flip, landing on a hologram and stabbing him in the side of his stomach.

Sweet Jesus, he prays aloud to his father once the presentation finally ends and all the other gamemakers leave, do not let that boy from District Nine die.

His father laughs. I may be the narrator, son, he says, but in this puppet show, I am not the ventriloquist.

With jazz hands and a mocking smile, Helga whispers the words ‘grave danger’. He whacks her upside the head. Idiot.

But she does have a point, he thinks later, when he’s in bed that night, staring up the ceiling and thinking of the Boy from District Nine. He is in grave danger.

He opens one of his bedside drawers, and takes out a glass-like phone, a little different from his blue one. This one is green, and it’s secret and it’s private. He doesn’t remember who gave it to him. But it’s his and no one knows.

He opens a closed-network browser and searches for information about the District Nine Boy. Hikaru Sulu, his name was, and he was a Farmer. His talents included fencing and driving anything that has wheels. His profile also detailed his features, his descent, his bloodline, his height, his weight, everything physical that concerned him and his status in the Games.

This makes Pavel think: what are his talents?

He falls asleep thinking of physics, astrophysics, advanced physics, physics physics physics and a little bit of running, run run running, and wakes up with saliva pouring from the side of his mouth, his green glass-like phone glinting in the bright daylight that streams through his window. He forgot to close the curtains, damn it. He rolls over and stashes the green phone away and gets up to close the curtains, and then enters his private bathroom.

Tonight was going to be a big night, he thinks, while in the shower. He’s nervous, and he doesn’t know why. He rubs the soap’s foam over his face and washes the soap off from his body.

He dries off, standing in the blowers, his hair flying about in all different directions. He doesn’t understand how and why he worries about that District Nine Boy – Hikaru Sulu – he’s supposed to be enjoying the Games. He doesn’t have to be worrying about anything, or anyone. Sure, he can place bets, he can support someone. But this boy, there was something about this boy and his lazy smirk that mesmerised him to the point that it angered him so much.

He was cute, yes, like that boy Finnick Odair, one of the older victors who is unfortunately dead due to a lapse in his judgement, joining the Project Mockingjay. Such a waste of life, Pavel thinks, a handsome man dying for a useless cause. Like Hikaru. The Games were a useless cause. Hikaru was that handsome man. Or The Games were the handsome man, Pavel’s destiny. If Helga weren’t so aloof, he would take his place soon enough as the Head Gamemaker. His mother expected it from him. Hikaru was the useless case. He will die, like all the tributes before him, a dead, battered, bruised body in a wooden effortless coffin returned to District Nine instead of a live boy with the wind swishing his hair across his gaunt face. It was no use liking a boy like Hikaru, or liking any of the tributes. They were all destined to die, if not now then in eleven years, when the Quarter Quell comes into play. Hikaru was always destined to die.

I’m in love with a dying man, he says to himself darkly, all our love’s flying in the sand.

His hair is coiffed up for the big Tribute Night.   
He looks even flashier than the host, Wanter Scale, whose eyes seemed to be bombarded with almost all of the make-up they could find from backstage: eyebrow ink, glittery eyeshadow, actual glitter from the dark of ages past (and by that he means Helga’s room when she was around five to seven years old), eyeliner so painfully sharp and eccentric, and is that blusher at the corner of his eyes?

Hikaru is wearing a golden suit that when crumpled shines. Helga, being the genius that she is, declares it silk, but is faux gold. Pavel nods at this wordlessly until someone scoffs lowly from behind them and turns away just as Pavel turns to look at them. His eyes widen slightly in realisation and smiles lightly. For someone so smart, Pavel thinks, she can be so bimbotic. Faux-gold? What even-- never mind, forget it, he tells himself.

His hair, now away from his eyes, were small and slanted and not at all folded, but it makes Pavel fall in love even more, and he loses his breath again.  His lower lip, which Pavel had not noticed in all its entirety, moves as Hikaru slides his tongue over it, covering it in his saliva. It tucks itself back under his upper lip, and Pavel is certain he has been put in the Winter House, he has completely frozen and yet it feels like he’s burning.

This cannot be denied anymore as a simple boyish crush. This is different. He is different. Everything is different. And Pavel doesn’t know whether to be terrified or to embrace it.

So Hikaru, are you in love, Wanter asks, and the audience chatters excitedly, even Helga who didn’t seem at all interested in him when they saw him with his impressive katana skills the night before, and Hikaru smiles and looks down and fiddles with a thick rusty-looking silver ring that adorns his right forefinger. He begins to chuckle slightly. Funny you should ask, he begins, and Pavel’s heart thumps painfully in a fit of nerves, fear and disappointment. So there is a girl, he resigns to himself, probably that blonde who he came with. Helga says her name is Janice Rand. She was pretty, and graceful, and poised. He deserves that, with his confident smirk and brave stride and lazy hair that always grazes his eyes. But, Hikaru’s voice from onstage interrupts his thoughts, I only met him recently, he says, looking down on the ring still. The entire room gasps, and if everybody would just shut up from their chattering or sobbing or squealing you can actually hear the rest of the country gasp as well, Pavel thinks, and shut up, Helga and wait a minute - did Hikaru just say what I thought he said?

He asks Helga to clarify and Helga groans and takes him by the shoulders and shakes him, crying the words he’s a Quiltbag Pavel a Quiltbag! and Pavel wants to vomit, and he didn’t even drink tonight.

I’m a Quiltbag too, Pavel almost says, but instead he removes himself from Helga’s tight hold and settles her back in and is tempted to dig into her purse and give her a serving of one of her sedatives, she’s so hateful sometimes Pavel wants her to overdose on her medication and be sent to a hospital for a long time, if she can’t die. A time of peace, no matter how long, without this know-it-all, would be great.

Wanter calms the audience down and continues on in the interview, asking him about this boy who he just met that he seems so smitten about, and he says that a poor boy like him could never get this him, he was a Capitol boy with big blue eyes that shined as bright as the lights that their Avox helpers would turn on once they entered their lodgings, thank you Avoxes, by the way, and that he was a poor boy who only knew how to farm and to identify poisonous plants and fruit from edible. He knew nothing of Capitol Culture, and this boy with the bright orbs of blue will just be a fantasy to me, he ends sadly. The audience collectively sobs from the heartfelt confession, and Pavel tries not to fall any more deeper, numbing his heart painfully from the strong blows of charm this charming boy exudes. That boy he likes must be very lucky, with such charm and beauty coming from him he’ll be bound to fall just as fast as Pavel had.

Wanter dismisses Hikaru with a smile and a greeting of good luck for him to survive the Games or confessing to this boy, whichever is more terrifying, and he laughs and sends Hikaru on his way back.

  
At the end of the show the Head Gamemaker goes backstage, and Pavel, having no choice, followed him with his sister Helga, even though right now he prefers to go home alone, walk the mansion alone, walk up the stairs alone, walk to his room alone, be in his room alone, go to the bathroom alone — alone alone alone. Everything is mixed into a blur, even Hikaru’s words which he anticipated to hear so much. He doesn’t remember anymore, only that Hikaru was a Quiltbag, and that he was in love with someone.

Knowing that Pavel is in love with this other boy hurts him. Met him only recently? It would be another tribute, clearly. They occupy the same building. They’d see each other. And once the Games would begin, Pavel would be looking at them through the screen, and he imagines Hikaru crying as he has no choice but to kill him, if Hikaru would actually have the gall to kill someone he loved. He would probably confess to him through a curtain of tears, and beg him to kill him instead, and this boy would win the Games, Hikaru’s body sent flying to the doorstep of the Sulu family while his soul is left in the Arena, his heart worn as a prize by that lucky boy to everywhere his tour would take him, and his name — Hikaru’s exotic, beautiful, strange, foreign name — would be a synonym of love. And Pavel, pained expression, is not allowed to see him, because he is from the Capitol. District Eleven hates the Capitol. All tribute districts hate the Capitol.

He is in a daze when he follows his father around to meet the tributes, shaking their hands and offering fake smiles and forged compliments, Helga better at it than he is. Helga is always better than him in almost everything except running. He was always good in running. And right now he wishes he can do that. District Eleven’s tributes are next.

At a closer look, Hikaru actually trimmed his hair. Held up by hairspray it goes unnoticed, but now Pavel cannot think of doing anything except stare at Hikaru and his perfect structure. He is thin, but he is steady. His jaw is tight-looking and firm. So is his female counterpart Janice Rand with her Capitol-esque beehive hairstyle. She smiles brightly at Helga. She seemed truly thrilled. This must be another one of those wannabe rebels like Miss Everdeen. But he does not say anything. Instead he imagines Hikaru lying down on his lap as he plays with his hair, but they both knew that wasn’t going to happen. Hikaru was in love and he was going to die.

I’m in love with a dying man, he repeats, all our love’s flying in the sand.

District Twelve and they are done, when there is a scuffle and before Pavel knows it, Janice Rand from District Eleven catches him off-guard and punches him in the nose.

Helga hears the thud, and she turns around swiftly. Pavel is on the floor. Someone is rushing to him and his father is loudly shouting about ventilation, and Blotch is screaming so loud enough to beat him, shouting about the eve of the Games, what about the big dinner? Janice you idiot, and the District Eleven stylists are dabbing the blood off Pavel’s face while a Peacekeeper is restraining Janice, and the District Eleven mentor Mister McKenna is grabbing Janice from the Peacekeeper. His father groans, irritated, and gets up hurriedly, shouting at Helga that he doesn’t have time for this drama and someone is carrying him up, and he is ran to a lift, before he allows a dozy smile and blacks out fully in the arms of the person carrying him, wishing that this man was Hikaru.

He wakes up in a dark, unfamiliar room, on a big sleek bed covered in silvery almost black covers. His nose feels different, almost tingly, and he remembers. Little Miss Blonde Bombshell Janice Rand of District Eleven punched him in the nose earlier. He doesn’t know how long it has been since that punch and his collapse and where is his family?

He gets up from the bed and he realises he’s changed out of the clothes he wore for the Tribute Night and into more comfortable clothing, sweatpants and a normal white t-shirt. It was something he would never wear outside of his room, and yet, he is wearing it.

He feel some sort of weight on his torso and he twists to see Hikaru Sulu in all his quaint glory, his arm on Pavel's side, an expression of content is on his face. What is going on, he thinks, and takes Hikaru's arm off him when Hikaru stirs and awakens. He smiles at Pavel and sits up and dear God, Pavel thinks again, flustered, he's naked. No. No no no.

Hikaru smiles, amused, and Pavel pulls his knees up to his chest, trying to stop any emotion from leaking out onto his face.

Hikaru tells him he's skipped the farewell party and offered to stay to guard him, because he fainted and Blotch said you didn't eat today, and I'll get you some soup just stay here, and Hikaru moves to get up but Pavel holds his wrist firmly and Hikaru sits back down and smiles and snakes an arm around Pavel's head and kisses his forehead and leaves and Pavel is confused again.

Hikaru comes back to the room with a bowl of what smelled and looked like canned chicken soup, he used to eat them while studying physics, and Hikaru offers to feed him but Pavel refuses to eat until he's explained why he's here in the same bed as Hikaru who has a crush on a Capitol Boy and Hikaru laughs and says Pavel is the Capitol Boy and don't worry if you don't like me, it is absolutely alright but Pavel is flailing his hands and tells Hikaru to stop talking, a little bit scared, he voices out, that this might be a ploy to get more supporters from the Capitol and maybe win the Games and I will not be played like that! Pavel cries, and Hikaru laughs with his low, rumbling laugh, and Pavel might just faint again out of one or both of the two reasons: he's in one bed with Hikaru and because he is absolutely confused now.

And also, Pavel asks, your friend Janice hit me! Hikaru laughs again and apologises when Pavel pouts slightly, and he tells Pavel that he won't stop talking about him enough for Janice to think of tactics to win in the Games. She had to do something, but since you were tailing your dad all the time Blotch couldn't talk to you, so Janice made up her mind to knock you out and told me to stay here while she went out to apologize and explain to your sister and Pavel smiles shyly, he doesn't know how to react. He got hit by someone just so her friend can get a chance to talk to him. If that's not a risk then he doesn't know what is.

He cannot talk anymore because Hikaru removes the thick rusty silver ring from his forefinger and shoves it into Pavel's middle ring, twisting it around. It's a bit loose, but not that loose that it falls out by itself. Pavel twists it around and Hikaru lifts his by the chin, and I've only just met you, he says, and I may be a tribute but this is not a ploy. I really like you and if ever I survive-- and Pavel throws his arms over Sulu's thin sun-kissed body and gasps in fear, I have been thinking about that too, please don't die, Pavel pleads and Hikaru takes Pavel's arms and slides his hands down to Pavel's wrists and looks into his eyes, I will try, and if I come back, I want to try if this works, and Pavel grips Hikaru's hands, begging him to stop saying if, because he will, he will survive and he will live and he will come back and Pavel will be here waiting. It will be okay, but both of them know it won't be.

The next day is the first day of the Games and in Hikaru's prep room, Pavel is sat there pathetically on a couch while his stylist is finalising him and his look, not caring that Pavel is there or that Hikaru is frozen in fear.

Pavel found some nice metal string and now he's wearing the ring around his neck, hidden under his dress shirt and plain black leather jacket, and when the stylist finally leaves Hikaru alone Pavel gets up tentatively and Hikaru pulls him into a tight hug which Pavel reciprocates. Hikaru looks like he wants to cry, and Pavel is already sobbing, and Hikaru wants to cry with him too, but he can't. Hikaru can't do anything.

Pavel wants to tear the skintight Gamesuit away from Hikaru's body and tell him to run, run like he does, and they'll leave Panem right now and they'll live a life away from the Games, and they'll be happy, but he can't. With this pressure of being the Head Gamemaker's son and a Capitol citizen and him being from a District and a Tribute, it will never happen.   
  
Ten seconds to the start, someone says over the intercom system like a god, the god of tearing them apart and Pavel hugs tighter, wailing, and Hikaru lets out one sad, broken, tired sob before letting go and entering the lift that pushes him up to the arena. Pavel is crying, tears flowing from his eyes and he sniffs, and the door closes and Hikaru stares straight ahead, trying to ignore the sadness.

Helga bursts in through the door and grabs Pavel by the shoulder, then by the arm, then by the wrist, pulling him out the door and Pavel come on, we have to go. Why are you crying, are you a quiltbag, Pavel?

And Pavel resists her, trying to stay in the room until Hikaru leaves, and there is loud beeping, not short but long and low, low loud siren-like beeps and the floor in the lift rises and Pavel rushes past his sister and to the glass elevator, trying to reach through it to touch Hikaru one more time and he is gone.

He falls to the floor, angry tears falling from his eyes, strangled cries coming from his mouth and his sister crouches beside Pavel, putting her arm around his back and soothing him.   
(These are the times when Pavel doesn't hate his sister, miraculously.)

He watches the Games religiously, asking his father how many times a sponsor can send things to help, and he sends one, and Hikaru receives two more, and Pavel's nerves are getting more and more uncontrollable. Helga and her Avox servant try to pry him off the screen but he doesn't leave the screen, he doesn't leave the room even.

And then the day he dreads comes. District Five's male tribute James Kirk tackles Hikaru to the ground, punches him unconscious and guts his arm. Blood comes streaming out in clots, and Pavel at home screams, and Spock from District Three and Leonard McCoy from District Ten come from out of the trees and Leonard grabs James' wrist and guts him, and from what the screen shows, Leonard and Spock themselves were bleeding through patches and layers of grass. Spock tends to James with a handful of long, big leaves and Leonard runs to Hikaru with his own handful. Janice, Hikaru's counterpart, comes, and Pavel cries at the screen, shouting at her names like traitor and whore when someone the connection zaps and the screen goes black. Pavel lets an angry shout. Helga doesn't react but leaves the room.

Pavel cries overnight, and the next day Helga tells him to follow her lead, and they get into a car and into a train station and then into a bullet train. Why, he asks, but Helga doesn't answer. She tells him he has to see it himself.

Hikaru and the other surviving tributes (Helga tells him it's James Tiberius Kirk from District Five, Leonard Horatio McCoy from District Ten, Spock from District Three, Nyota Upenda Uhura from District Five, Montgomery Scott from District Six, Janice Rand from District Nine and Carol Wallace Marcus from District Two) are in one train car, recovering. Pavel cries.

What is going on, he asks, and one of those awake, Carol, tells him that District Thirteen was supposed to send in a tribute named John Harrison, but he never showed up. Only their female tribute, who then died in someone else's hands and then killed by McCoy with a hilarious loud cry (it sounds barbaric, but this was how Twos were taught to live, to think of the Games the same way the Capitol does).

John Harrison went into hiding but he sent a note before the Games. He will destroy the Arena, save all of them, prepare for a war. Where are we going, he asks again, and Carol only shakes her head. Only the man driving this train knows. He furrows his brows. Helga is behind him, and she raises her brows. He knows what that means, it's their father. But where are they going.

Hikaru wakes up after four days and two point seven hours (thank Spock for that accuracy), but during that time Pavel toys with the ring around his neck, as they drive through the rails past hills and mountains and snowcaps and the occasional tunnel that has been graffitied with James Tiberius Kirk's An Arrow To The Stars insignia of an golden arrow-like triangle with a black star in the centre. It is the new symbol of revolt, the same way the Mockingjay was.

He doesn't know where they are but they pass a sign that says Welcome to Canada, but he doesn't know where that is. He needs a map, a chart, at least for security, but Blotch who is on the train who is the only one who would look at him while they close the infirmary won't give him a time of day. They're disappearing, he tells Pavel, and none of us know where we're going.

Hikaru touches Pavel's face when he awakes, his calloused, tortured hands that Pavel watched move in a terrifying manner in the Arena suddenly kind and loving. Pavel sobs a little and hugs Hikaru, but it hurts a bit because the ring is hanging from his neck and attempting to protrude through his skin if he holds any tighter. Hikaru laughs.

The train stops, they leave, and they walk a long distance, Pavel's Capitol legs tiring easily under the pressure of his father pushing him to keep walking and his stuffed bag. He doesn't know what time it is when the crickets come to sing, and Hikaru laces their arms together to keep him upright. James puts his head on Spock's shoulder. Helga scoffs silently and trods on.

We're going to hide, his father declares when they stop in somewhere dark, forcing everyone to drink water. We're going to hide because we committed an act of treason against the President. It's going to be like the seventy-fifth again. We're going to fight for an equal world or die trying, he says, and they get back up to walking again.

They find a wooden bunker, a fireplace in the centre of the room. His father opens it and there is a staircase. Down. Wooden staircase. Down. Then bright purple lights. From wood to metal. Down down down. A lift. Down the lift.

Welcome to Starfleet, his father says, when they get off the lift. James' insignia painted on a metallic white wall is the sight that welcomes them.

Starfleet, James says, tasting the word on his tongue. Why Starfleet, he asks again.  
We did some research, Helga responds this time, your insignia, it's a symbol of a twentieth-century TV show about outer space. Its themes were on curiosity of and optimism for the future. The same thing we want to promote in this revolution, I'd say, instead of war, or rebellion. Optimism. It will be all okay. We are fighting this war with optimism powering us to allow curiosity.

And Pavel believes her. Everyone does. What a wonderful message, Pavel thinks, as Hikaru laces their fingers together. A war is coming, as Carol said, and his sister too, but it will be fought on optimism. With Hikaru here safe and sound, he's found his optimistic reason to fight.


End file.
